Executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward says the Old Trafford giants have the financial muscle to almost double the club-record £37.5m fee they paid for Chelsea's Juan Mata in january and blow their rivals out of the water.

The Mata deal does not come close to Real Madrid’s £85m capture of Gareth Bale, the £80m the same club spent acquiring Cristiano Ronaldo from United or the £75m Barcelona are paying Liverpool for Luis Suarez.

But Woodward insisted United have got the resources to join the elite band og clubs capable of spending such vast sums on a single player.

United have been strongly linked with Vidal, Borussia Dortmund's Germany centre-back Mats Hummels and several members of the Holland squad Van Gaal coached at this summer's World Cup.

Woodward added: "We’ve had a lot of scouting output through the last 12 months, flagging up various things to us. But Louis is the one that makes the ultimate decision around who he wants - I’m not going to force-feed him with a player that he hasn’t selected.

“What the new kit deal shows - and what we’re seeing with everything we’re doing from a commercial perspective, talking to agents, talking from a player’s perspective about wanting to come to us -, is that we’re the biggest club in the world.